Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone Goes Official with an Edge-to-Edge Display and Modular Capabilities

Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone Goes Official with an Edge-to-Edge Display and Modular Capabilities

Andy Rubin, one of the creators of Android has been teasing its own Essential Phone on social networks for quite awhile now. Today, though, we finally have a first official glimpse at the handset and what secrets it holds to take on the overcrowded market of Android phones.

The announcement exclusively from The Verge which reveals the Essential Phone won’t just another run-in-the-mill Android phone. For starters, it checks every other soaring trend of the industry including an edge-to-edge display on the front, dual cameras, and a lack of the standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

More on that glorious panel, it stretches all the way up to the top and wraps around the lone front-facing camera. The company says that Android’s status bar generally leaves an empty space in the middle, hence the decision. There’s some glaring bezel on the bottom, though.

Moreover, the smartphone is built with a sumptuous combination of titanium and ceramic allowing it to take a few hits when dropped. The phone also skimps on any kind of logos whatsoever which is certainly a first and provides the body with an extremely subtle look.

The Essential Phone includes a dual-camera setup on the rear with a regular 13-megapixel shooter and another one is a monochrome sensor, similar to what Huawei has done with its P series. That additional lens allows the phone to capture significantly more light for better night shots. On the front, you will also find an 8-megapixel camera which can also capture 4K videos.

However, the company is primarily flaunting the small metal pogo pins located on the back which they will be using “to build an ecosystem of accessories”. Just like Motorola’s Z lineup, these connectors allows external utilities to plug right into the phone. To get you started, Essential will ship a 360-degree camera and a charging dock, both of which will connect to those pins.

As far as the specifications are concerned, the Essential Phone is powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 processor, 4 gigs of RAM, 128GB of onboard storage and costs $699 unlocked in the United States.